The alleged hate group’s efforts against ‘black predators’ come as violent crime at the Maryland campus has plunged. Group founder Matthew Heimbach says the patrols are being disparaged because of anti-white discrimination.

Matthew Heimbach, the founder and president of the White Student Union, said the purpose of the patrols is "not for glory or controversy, it is to help our fellow students."

A white pride student organization at Towson University has sparked controversy and gained national attention after it declared that members would begin night patrols to combat the “black crime wave” on campus.

“For those who are not Towson students it seems hard to fathom that every single day black predators prey upon the majority white Towson University student body,” Matthew Heimbach, the president and founder of the White Student Union, wrote in a blog post on Feb. 28.

But school officials said that Towson, which is near Baltimore, has one of the safest campuses in the University System of Maryland. It has the lowest crime statistics among the USM campuses, and the total number of violent crimes in 2012 was down 37.5% despite a 2.3% increase in enrollment.

On Wednesday, in a message to the campus community, Deb Moriarty, the vice president for student affairs, and Police Chief Bernie Gerst discouraged students from taking crime fighting into their own hands. They said they would strive to protect the rights of all students.

“We will continue to work vigorously with students who feel threatened by the proposed activities of this group to ensure their safety and to help them find their voice to take back their power from those they feel are denigrating them,” Moriarty and Gerst wrote in the message.

The White Student Union group is not recognized as a student group by the university. It has, however, been added to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Hate Map” and is classified as a “white nationalist” organization. According to the SPLC website, “white nationalist groups espouse white supremacist or white separatist ideologies, often focusing on the alleged inferiority of non-whites.” Mark Potok, a SPLC spokesman, told Towson’s independent student newspaper “The Towerlight” that Heimbach’s language and rhetoric as president of the group point to this way of thinking.

“We base off of ideology,” Potok said. “It has nothing to do with criminality or potential for violence.”

Potok pointed out that the WSU blog links to pro-white websites like the Council of Conservative Citizens that do directly promote racial segregation.

K. Carl Smith of Frederick Douglass Republicans was giving a presentation at CPAC about how Republicans could reach out more effectively to minorities. Scott Terry, a member of the White Student Union, began challenging Smith about the inclusion of blacks in the GOP's tent, in an exchange captured by the liberal blog ThinkProgress that quickly spread around the Internet.

As seen in the video, Smith responds by citing a letter Frederick Douglass wrote in which he forgave his former owner. Terry interrupted and said, "For giving him shelter and food?" Several people in the audience gasp, though ThinkProgress notes there are also cheers. Terry muttered, "Why can't we just have segregation?" after the exchange, ThinkProgress reported.

When Smith mentioned Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Atlantic Wire reports, White Student Union "founder and commander" Matthew Heimbach interrupted that King was a "Marxist," and consequently not welcome.

After the exchange, Terry told The Guardian that he is a descendent of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, and that he didn't totally disagree with slavery because it's a "complicated issue." He said, "I can't make one broad statement that categorically it was evil all the time because that's not true."

Terry later told The Blaze that some of his comments were being taken out of context, and that he did not support slavery. However, when it comes to segregating by race, Terry said Americans should have "freedom of association."

Heimbach, who started the White Student Union, has been more confrontational in subsequent interviews.

"Diversity is not a strength," Heimbach told the Baltimore Sun, adding, "We're being displaced from our own country," in reference to immigration. He also told The Blaze that the issue of "forced segregation" should be left to the states.

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As The Huffington Post previously reported, Towson University has responded to Heimbach's student group with caution, neither endorsing it nor trying to shut it down. The Southern Poverty Law Center designated the White Student Union a "hate group."

Heimbach responded to the label, telling Slate, "You look at the SPLC, as fake as they are, they talk about how patriot groups are increasing in the Obama era. With a black face in charge of the White House, of the federal government, we know it's foreign. We know something isn't right."